Context:
Gene Sharp, a pioneer of nonviolence research and action, will be missed but his work will always be with us.
In the News:
“His passion in empowering the grassroots with the belief that people could rebel successfully using non-violent means enraged dictators from Hugo Chávez to Slobodan Milošević and authorities from Russia to Angola. And it inspired modern uprisings from Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004 to Egypt in the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement against economic inequality that spread out of the US in 2011, and beyond.
Peace Science Insights:
- More resistance movements are choosing to adopt nonviolent forms of struggle as the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance becomes more widely known.
- The great nonviolent success stories all displayed clear levels of nonviolent conflict escalation.
- Democratic regimes that experience nonviolent resistance during the government transition survive, on average, 9x longer than transitions with violent resistance.
References:
Peace Science Digest, via various nonviolence scholars who have, and will continue to, carry on Gene Sharp’s legacy: (CHENOWETH, 2017; SØRENSEN & JOHANSEN, 2016; BAYER, BETHKE & LAMBACH, 2016).
Gene Sharp, US scholar whose writing helped inspire Arab Spring, dies at 90. By Joanna Walters for The Guardian. Jan. 31, 2018.
